Manchester Psych Fest delivered its 11th edition on the last weekend of August 2024, it was a sun-soaked day packed with music, art and entertainment for all. This festival has so much going for it, and this year’s bill was incredibly filled with so much variety and intrigue that it made the choosing of who’s next and where’s next hard to figure out. But that’s the beauty of an all-dayer, it requires a bit of pre-planning but in the end it all comes down to where your feet take you on the day. This festival’s niche resides in its interest in the loud, lo-fi, and the mesmerizing, bestowing prominence to experimental music and alternative genres. It has broad scope because of this, and even more so because it takes in sounds from across the world over.
Psych Fest is set within the city streets of Manchester, taking over some of the city’s best live music spots and arts spaces, and also new for this year, it went about creating immersive experiences in otherwise strange spaces, like the re-purposing of Projekts Skatepark as a venue for the day. The real trick to this type of event is knowing where everything is located and how to get there and doing so in time to catch the act that you’re hoping to see. Ultimately, time and a good knowledge of the area are the main essentials needed to excel here. And this isn’t always as easy as one, two, three. It’s all about making the best of it that you can. With the distance between venues this year, it all came down to what made most sense in the moment and if it was worth going that extra mile. Personally, I made the effort and went the long way to the furthest venue on the street but chose a favourite over something new. Each to their own.
The festival was run very well in regards to queuing times at each venue, drink queuing times inside the venues, and wristband collection was also smoothly handled with minimal wait times at the box office. I can only applaud the organisers and venue and security staff for excellently managing these aspects of the event. The streets were lively with festival goers and a festival atmosphere was evidently present, it was all very relaxed and easy going. It felt like a good, safe environment to be a part of.
The festival’s partnership with Bundobust offered secret sets throughout the day from some of the acts playing in the bigger venues, as well as sprinkling in some DJ sets, a pop-up food stall and some food discounts. It worked well for the most part.
Bundobust Brewery on Oxford Road saw Billie Marten, Marika Hackman, Crocodiles and Prima Queen take part in secret sets, it’s always interesting to see how these things are organised and how they turn out, as they are, after all, pop-up music sets—and each different festival handles these types of additional events uniquely in the end. I attended two of the pop-up sets, and sadly they were both a little lacklustre due to the conditions of the environment—the general noise that comes from a restaurant is just too overpowering for an acoustic guitar and solo voice, so on this occasion it meant that the moment was spoiled because of this. I like secret sets but the way this was delivered on the day didn’t fit the brief and it made it incredibly difficult for the artist to connect with their audience, because unfortunately they were having to compete with benches filled with people eating and conversing while trying to reach festival goers gathered around, standing, mostly at the back of the room, so trying to sing or talk to them was immensely difficult. The configuration just didn’t work. It’s one of those times where it makes you as an observer, feel uncomfortable for the performer and what they have to go through just to do their job. Next time, I think a rethink would be best. I will note that the location is rather splendid though, Bundobust Brewery is a lovely little spot and very well located within the festival’s venue route, and it was nice to watch some live music in daylight, to be able to look up and out, it does actually enhance the experience.
Over at the Ritz, the energy was completely different. The main room was already almost full by mid-afternoon, there were crowds on the balcony and upfront. It was THUS LOVE who brought us here. Their first record was a post-punk delight, now out promoting what is to become their second full-length release, due November 1st, titled All Pleasure. The band’s music has become more loose as they turn to this new era, moving away from the streamlined dark edges and towards something rawer, grizzlier, but still stacked with lush melodic hooks. They focused on unveiling new music in this set, a lot of their earlier catalogue had to take a backseat. It was a surprise to hear, I actually had to physically stop and check that the band on stage was really THUS LOVE, and yes, a camera zoom closed in on a drum case nestled on the stage and confirmed that it was truly them. Their musical style has significantly gone through an evolution, plus there was guitar swinging, mic sharing shout-alongs, and just a lot of fun happening in general. It shows that when we allow our internal expression to naturally develop and go where it needs to go, it isn’t always a bad thing, it is part of the process that aids change and growth. With what THUS LOVE showed us in this hour set, November looks to be an exciting time and just the beginning of much more success for this band.
Over in the Union at MMU, the stage was hosted by Wide Awake festival. It was where we found Divorce, a band who has been hotly-tipped for some time, and we’d agree, it is for good reason. The Nottingham four piece writes songs that are full of sentiment and heart, something that is rare to come across in modern music these days. Their songs have upbeat tendencies and boost general moral, a lyric that stood out immediately upon hearing it, lifted from a new song releasing very soon: “I care about you already, I wanna lift you up,” this feels simply amazing to hear when often it feels like we live in a world so dispassionate and disconnected. This unifying tone of voice that Divorce carries in their songs really connects on a deeper level, and it is part of what makes live music so unique to many other art forms, that it actually physically brings people together, there’s no passivity, it is a series of tangible moments unfolding in real time. Divorce’s set was very well attended as well, and the room was a large one, it’s very easy to see why Bombay Bicycle Club took them out on tour with them earlier this year, they’re perfectly matched and they have great stage presence too. Divorce has a quality similar to Big Thief in the way that they weave tenderness through their songs, they also wear dual vocals very well, and the harmonious aspect to what they do is so comforting as well. It feels like Divorce is a band that will be around for a very long time, if their music continues to be this good.
For a second set of the day, Billie Marten performed a trio set in the Albert Hall (the largest venue of the lot,) yet surprisingly it was unusually low attended. But it made the occasion all the more special. Marten is between album campaigns currently, so the set was a mixture of songs from across her catalogue with a few unreleased songs added in as a taste of what’s to come. 2023’s Drop Cherries was still very much in the spotlight for this performance, songs like ‘Willow’ and ‘Just Us’ show off Marten’s skillful songwriting, and nous for painting pictures in a listener’s mind using just her words. The beauty of the Albert Hall, especially catching it in the middle of the day in summer, and watching a set there, is that essentially it’s a remarkable piece of architecture, for one, but also, because it has the benefit of access to many windows, daylight streams on through into the room and makes everything just that little bit more lovely. Marten’s music felt like the perfect relaxation moment in a festival programme where there was so much variation, her soothing sounds told in a minimalist format paired with simple instrumentation was just the delight fit for late-afternoon.
Manchester Psych Fest will return in 2025 on Saturday, 30th August. Early bird tickets are on-sale now via the event’s official ticketing partner, Dice – for more info and to buy tickets, click here.
Photo Credit: Divorce by Jonny Nolan
